I have been writing for Forbes since 2005. Prior to that I covered the business beat for the New York Daily News. Because I've studied both finance and journalism, and because I like both numbers & analysis and sports, what's a more fun job than merging the two, writing about sports from the business side and from the stat geek/number crunching side? I have a BS in business from Boston College and a masters in business journalism from New York University.

The Most Miserable Sports Cities

Since big-time pro sports came to Seattle in 1967, the opportunities for championships have been fairly plentiful. The NBA Sonics made the playoffs 22 times before leaving town in 2008, a run that included six trips to the Western Conference finals and three to the NBA finals. Football’s Seahawks have made it to the postseason 11 times since their 1976 birth, reaching the conference championship game twice and the Super Bowl in 2006. And the Mariners, an American League expansion team in 1977, managed to reach the American League Championship Series three times between 1995 and 2001.

But through a cumulative 111 seasons and 37 playoff appearances, Seattle boasts only one champion: the 1979 Sonics of Gus Williams, Jack Sikma and Dennis Johnson. The list of playoff busts includes some real gut-wrenchers: The 1978 Sonics blew a championship by dropping a Game 7 at home to Washington in the finals, while the top-seeded 1994 club lost a first-round series to the eighth-seeded Denver Nuggets. And the 2001 Mariners went down in the playoffs to the Yankees after posting a 116-46 record during the regular season. Add it all up, and Seattle’s history lands it at the top of our list of the Most Miserable Sports Cities.

We’re not defining sports misery as sheer futility. The Chicago Cubs going over a century without a championship; the Los Angeles Clippers turning in two winning seasons since 1985–everyone knows about that stuff. We’re going for something else. Sports lore is filled with tales of the near-miss: the Brooklyn Dodgers reaching the World Series six times between 1947 and 1956 only to lose to the Yankees in five of them; the Buffalo Bills losing four straight Super Bowls in the ’90s; the New York Rangers and Atlanta Braves coming close countless times before falling short of a championship. We decided to add it all up and create a sports heartbreak index to identify where fans have been exposed to teams good enough to get their hopes up, only to let them down in the end.

We scored each city on the number of times one of its teams has lost in the postseason, adjusting the misery points to give the most weight to losing in the final round (World Series, Super Bowl, NBA Final, Stanley Cup Final) and doling out progressively fewer points for losing earlier playoff rounds. We also factored in the number of years since each city’s last title (31 for Seattle), and the ratio of each city’s cumulative seasons to championships won (Atlanta, for instance, has compiled 153 MLB, NBA, NFL and NHL seasons while winning one championship, the 1995 Braves). And to keep the playing field even, we limited the contenders to cities with at least 75 cumulative seasons in the four major sports leagues.

We also tacked on a bonus point whenever a city loses a team to greener pastures. The loss of its NBA club was just enough to nudge Seattle past Atlanta, a city with one sports title in 153 cumulative seasons, to the top of the misery list. Atlanta’s postseason misery is legendary, led by the Braves’ failure to take home a world championship in 13 of 14 playoff appearances from 1991 to 2004. Throw in a Falcons loss in their lone Super Bowl appearance (1999) and a pair of losses by the NBA Hawks in the Eastern Conference finals, and Atlanta rides neck-and-neck with Seattle on the disappointment meter.

Rounding out the top five on the sports misery list: Phoenix, where the 2001 Diamondbacks took the city’s only championship in 92 cumulative seasons; Buffalo, where the NFL Bills lost four straight Super Bowls in the 1990s and the NHL Sabres are still looking for their first Stanley Cup; and San Diego, home to teams that have lost six of seven championship round matchups over the years, the Chargers American Football League crown in 1963 standing as the city’s only championship.

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This is 2011, limiting your index to the four leagues of your choosing is, from my perspective, poor journalism. If you are judging cities you should consider using a standard based on the culture and values of that city. Seattle is a Pacific Rim City with many connections to Asia. Ichiro is more valuable to us than Alex Rodriguez ever was. Between Microsoft and Boeing Seattle has a large international community. The Sounders have had an excellent season. Seattle has a very large Russian population. Svetlana Abrosimova anyone? It’s not that we don’t care as much about the four leagues you discussed, I personally couldn’t love my Hawks any more than I do; it’s that you can’t limit Cities like Seattle, Atlanta and Phoenix to that standard. If the judge is heartbreak you must consider how singularly invested we as fans are in that team. As I remember it the overwhelming consensus when the Sonics left was concern for the Storm. Once the owners split the teams from a business perspective, the community became much less concerned about the move to Oklahoma. Using your index of teams that broke our hearts, you have to take 2010 Seahawks off the list. We expected a tough road, and we pulled together that home field advantage to not only make the playoffs, but far exceed any expectation. The Seattle Storm had one of the greatest runs in any sport last season. The only reason it stopped was that they won the championship. They set a new league record for margin of victory, first half points, points from the bench and total rebounds. All of this in one game. The last at home loss was September 2009. I understand that the WNBA is not the NBA from a business perspective, but our players are superstars overseas. Each of the Euroleague teams in the final four playoffs has a member of the Seattle Storm on their roster. Any idea how many Olympians take the court in Seattle on any given night? If I remember correctly Svetlana Abrosimova is a starter for her native Russia, but sits behind Swin Cash in Seattle. For an international city like Seattle, this is important. As a business person in the area, this is important. International businessmen and women have no idea who the Seattle Seahawks are, nor do they have any interest. Forbes is a business magazine; they should recognize the business perspective. Seattle is a terrible sports town? Says Who?

I don’t see how Atlanta and Kansas City can be ranked more miserable than Cleveland. KC won the World Series in 1985 and Super Bowl IV in 1970. Atlanta went to the World Series five times in the 1990′s, winning it in 1995 against none other than the Cleveland Indians. Although the Indians were in the Series in 1995 and 1997, they lost both times, first to the Braves and then to the Florida Marlins. The last Series they won was in 1948, 63 years ago. The Cavaliers have only been in the NBA Finals one time losing in a four game sweep to the Spurs. The last major sports championship for Cleveland was the Browns in 1964 against the Colts, three years before the Super Bowl era began. That’s 46 years and climbing since that City has seen a major sports championship!! They have never been in the Super Bowl, ever!!! Although Buffalo has never won a Super Bowl, at least they played in four of them. And as far as Denver goes, I wouldn’t even put them in the top 10. Remember a guy named John Elway and the “Drive” which happened against none other than the Cleveland Browns, knocking them out of their first chance at a super bowl. Then Denver wins back to back SuperBowls in 1997 and 98 and they are ranked “one” behind Cleveland in misery??? Maybe someone ought to research a little better on this.